Harvey is no ordinary rabbit. For one thing, he’s six feet tall. Also, he can stop time. And he’s a pooka, a mischievous spirit out of Celtic mythology. And he’s invisible – at least, to everyone except Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmy Stewart), who calls Harvey his best friend. Now, Elwood likes to drink, and he may even be crazy, but what he really is, in Henry Koster’s 1950 movie Harvey, is an affront to middle-class propriety.In this satire, based on Mary Chase’s play, Harvey doesn’t really have to do anything to make mischief, except let Elwood insist on his existence. Soon, Elwood has convinced even Dr. Chumley (Cecil Kellaway), the shrink who’d have him committed, that Harvey is real.
Stewart, in one of his most amiable performances, makes Elwood a precursor to those comic anti-heroes of the ’60s and ’70s, like Alan Bates in King of Hearts or Bud Cort in Harold and Maude, who suggest that it’s really the rest of society that’s insane, and that a little deliberate craziness is the best immunization against society’s madness.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3avBW9ncEA]